Whatever it takes

Finding help at PORA, Amy Brown is one determined former prostitute

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I thought she had star quality, like Reese
Witherspoon, maybe, the way she got up to speak before the audience of some
200 people at the PORA fundraising dinner March 3. She was poised, funny,
like when she told about almost getting kicked out of PORA, a little
embarrassed by a few details of her story but in a charming way. She had
gone to work for an escort service, and learned the sex trade, because she
didn’t want to steal. Then, as I listened to 29-year-old Amy Brown, her
real name, it sank in that this was no high-class hooker but a poor little
girl who is lucky to be alive. She was no practiced speaker but instead was
telling her story in public for the first time, scared to death.
She’s pretty now, but not long ago she was down to 87 pounds, covered
with bruises, and miserable with drugs, alcohol, and a life of destruction.
She’s a star, not of movies, but of long-term tough-but-compassionate
recovery, the PORA way. Now, after a year in the two-year program,
recovering but still fragile, she has turned from rule-breaker to advocate.
“I’m huge about these rules,” Amy says. She was 11 when her father was murdered. She hated
her mother and was sent away to live with relatives in Utah and then a
foster home, where she was sexually abused. At 17 she had a son, who was
taken away from her four years later because of her drug use.
“That’s when I looked up escort services in the phone
book.” At 23 she tried to commit suicide by slitting her own throat.
Her drug use started with acid, weed, and alcohol when she was 12, then
meth at 13, and heroin at 21. She eventually switched to cocaine:
“That was a monster. I ran out of veins I could use.”Inspired by her banquet speech, I arranged to
interview her at PORA’s building on 11th Street. She told me she was
in a 30-day drug-treatment program in Quincy when she first noticed a
brochure for PORA with its old name, Prostitutes, Options, Referrals and
Alternatives. Prostitution, unmentionable in the culture of drug-treatment
centers, was a piece of the addiction mess Amy hadn’t found help for.
PORA also offered a long-term residential treatment program, something she
knew she needed: “I wanted to want to quit for many years.” She
called PORA but couldn’t get in. Months later, she was arrested on
drug charges in Charleston, placed under the supervision of a drug court,
and threatened with prison. A call to the organization that now calls
itself Positive Options, Referrals and Alternatives turned up an available
bed. That was in March 2006. “I just knew that this was where I
needed to be,” she says. “It has the time. You can’t
change overnight.”Long-term residential treatment centers for women
trying to leave prostitution are cruelly rare. The handful of others are in
major cities. Springfield has one because a woman named Dee Nelson, after
trying to help a prostitute she met on a street corner, envisioned it in
the early ’90s. With 11 others, she formed the organization in 1992,
and its shelter was opened in 1997. Since then PORA has offered hope and
housing to 110 women. The success rate is carefully stated by executive
director Bernie Carver: “Over the past five years, people who were
here six months or more have a better than 80 percent chance of long-term
success” — which also means that many don’t make it.
PORA’s task is like “reparenting,” Carver says.
“Women need a lot of support.” Amy, a treatment veteran, adds
this: “We’re wasting tons of money on 30-day treatment centers
with no aftercare. There are only six beds here, but the impact PORA makes
is much larger than its capacity.” Amy’s year has been filled with 12-step
meetings and therapy sessions. “I wasn’t used to talking about
my issues,” she says. “The therapy I had as a child was led by
the therapist. Here, you get to hear your questions and then your answers.
They just say ‘uh-huh.’” She took GED classes, got
tutoring in math, and passed the GED exam in June. Now she has a restaurant
job and is enrolled at Lincoln Land Community College. Once anorexic,
she’s learning to like food again. She took parenting classes and
gained the right to visit her son, now 11. They had two four-hour sessions
together before Christmas. She writes to him often and is tape-recording a
Harry Potter book to send to him. “I’m trying to do everything
I can to get him back,” she says. Amy is clear about her goals: “I want to get my
son, to be self-sufficient, to be healthy and happy.” She sighs and
smiles: “I still have a long way to go. I’m not sure how much
it will take. I’m going to do whatever it takes.” Contact Fletcher Farrar at ffarrar@illinoistimes.com.